Actually, 'tie-in' may be too forgiving a term -- 'skinning' would be more accurate a description. What Altaïr's Chronicles delivers is an Assassin's Creed game only by name -- had someone plonked in, say, the plucky Prince of Persia in the lead role, none would be the clichéd wiser. Except for what the papyrus-thin Holy Land plot and setting gives away. Returning home after an unspecified mission, Altaïr (or at least, one would assume, a memory of him) is tasked with finding and destroying a so-called sacred Chalice for the sake of the Third Crusade. Not that the plot will leave any lasting impressions regardless. Broken down into separate areas and acts, even with the 'Altaïr's Chronicles' moniker, the game makes very little effort in specifying when and what relation its events have to both present and future iterations in the Assassin's Creed franchise. If at all.
Evidently enough, those expecting a return of the stealth mechanics of the premiere Assassin's Creed should stick to that prior effort. A 'point A to point B' game in every sense, Altaïr's Chronicles is an action platformer through-and-through -- so much so, that the Prince of Persia comparisons appear even more viable. Much like Ubisoft’s pit-leaping, guard-stabbing royalty, Altaïr's Chronicles involves a heck of a lot of climbing, jumping and swinging up, over, and around rooftops, pits and various unthoughtfully placed traps -- except with a slightly more forgiving health bar. To break up the acrobatic monotony are the enemy base -- dumbfounded guards and their ever predictable artificial intelligence, whose aim is to stop you, or at least slow you down from reaching whatever murder objective the current environment's two-dimensional NPC's have set poor Altaïr. What little stealth gameplay there is amounts to making use of all-too-sensitive context-sensitive actions; fighting off guards when the inevitable alarm sounds; or holding down the R button to walk instead of carelessly jog about the place, ramming into people and their subsequent grunts -- admittedly, amusingly so.
The irony speaks for itself, really.
It's with this sort of hammed bare-bones gameplay that the true essence of the title shines through. At its heart, Altaïr's Chronicles very much feels like a game that would have worked, and therefore been less wanting of the DS marketplace, had it been delivered to mobile phones. Considering developers Gameloft have their roots in mobile game development, maybe that sentiment isn't too unfounded. Whatever the case, Altaïr's Chronicles takes little to no advantage of its hostly hardware. The game, playable practically completely with digital controls, still feels incredibly unrefined, with actions not only assigned to a non-traditional button layout, but also layered with an all-too-common delay and mistiming. An awful detail, considering the amount of perilous heights you'll no doubt be fumbling through.
Where the interface shines, is ironically when the obligatory mini-game makes its appearance. More often than not when Altaïr reaches a locked dead end, with no obvious solution in sight, players can be assured there's a clueless, albeit coincidentally placed NPC, with the contents of their pockets ready for the taking. It's at this point the game switches to an inside view of a purse, requiring players pickpocket by rubbing the screen to unveil the goodies inside, then dragging them out -- making sure as to not disturb the rest of the items. Such clever, if rudimentary, gameplay makes you wonder what could have been possible, had the entire game been exclusively stylus driven. Sure, the mini-games are exercises completely broken off from the rest of the horrid platforming action. But maybe that's what also makes them so endearing -- as long as you ignore questioning how inanimate objects move of their own accord, blocking your pickpocketing path, in the tight spaces of a guard's purse. Right.
"Oh, don't mind me just standing here
nonchalantly RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU."
nonchalantly RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU."
Otherwise, it's tap-tap-tapping through the inventory screens to sort out Altaïr's orb collection for health and sword upgrades, or revising what primitive skills list or non-melee weapons there is to use for combat. There's a combinational fighting system the developers were aiming for somewhere in there, to be sure -- but blindly button mashing a sword works just fine all the same. Then again, asking too much of the combat is most likely missing the point of the hardware Altaïr's Chronicles calls home. By the same token, that automatically doesn’t make it enjoyable, nor does it mean potential players should have to tolerate such lazy design. Especially when the central theme of the game is based around killing people. Apparently.
Such wonky design however undoubtedly perfects itself in the camera system. If the death-defying acrobatics won't drive you up the wall (hardy-har-har), the camera system -- or the lack thereof -- will be number one on your never-achievable hit list. "Where the heck am I meant to jump now?" Scream. "Since when was there a guard standing there?" Shout. "Oh, so I’m just supposed to flip through these multiple pendulums without actually seeing the angles they’re swinging at." Do the twist. "WHY MUST YOU UNFATHOMABLE SPIKES TORMENT ME SO?" Just like this. In a game where blind pinpoint accuracy is mistaken for skill, Altaïr's Chronicles epitomises everything that is wrong with fixed 3D platformers.
Navi makes a cameo appearance. Because the game
wasn't needlessly frustrating enough.
wasn't needlessly frustrating enough.
It's a good thing then that Ubisoft had the foresight to fill Altaïr's Chronicles with a distracting graphical sheen -- at least by DS standards. Quite the looker in the texture and polygon-pushing department, Altaïr's Chronicles' aesthetics are impressive -- even if the slowdown and obligatory FMV artifacts remind you otherwise. The audio department does its part with environmental ambiance and situational music -- that unfortunately all too often take you out of the experience by looping half-handedly, coming across as glitchy altogether. However, considering the overall quality of technical showmanship, these 'minor' contrivances should be of no noticeable issue. Until you realise the loading times associated with packing this content into a DS cartridge. Dear oh dear, the loading times. Mildly bad if you die only rarely -- which you won’t -- the four to six second wait each time you hop back into the frustrating fray, or simply load your save file, is deplorable. Couple this with the unfair controls and camera system, and you have a right formula for a spontaneous DS frisbee.
Hopefully, the franchise side-story is not a formula Ubisoft will be replicating anytime soon. As a platformer, Altaïr's Chronicles is a frustrating exercise in tolerance and trial and error. As an Assassin's Creed game, it not only fails at providing fans with any worthwhile fiction, but is a reminder that all that Altaïr touches isn’t stealth. It's perhaps most telling that Ubisoft’s own CEO makes no effort in substantiating the existence of Altaïr's Chronicles when speaking on the future of the franchise. An early tarnish on an otherwise promising property, these chronicles are best left forgotten.
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